2. Julian
Julian
Ettie’s silver-blond hair is a mess against her white sheets. Her eyes flutter beneath her lids, and a soft whimper leaves her lips.
Maybe I should give her something to keep the nightmares quiet. She whines again, and her chest jerks beneath the thin blanket. My heart stutters. I pull her against me and rest my chin on the top of her head.
I am hopelessly in love with Ethal Abigail Leighlan. And the second I tell her that, she’s going to try to run from me. Which I would never allow. I know my girl. She’ll come to terms with us on her own, eventually. I’m nothing if not patient.
My arms tighten around her as another cry slips from her bow-shaped lips.
I have a compound in my bag. A topical sedative that I can rub on her wrists to help her get some rest. If she won’t share her demons so that I can help her slay them, the least I can do is bury them with some narcotics she’ll never know about.
Once her breathing evens out again, I slide carefully from her bed. The sheets cling to her damp skin. It smells like sex and her shampoo. The combined scents are intoxicating enough to make me want to stay here and stare at her while she sleeps.
I force myself to leave her side and shut the door silently behind me.
A groan drifts from the hallway. Someone’s here.
Damn it. Ettie keeps her gun by her bed. Going back for it could give the intruder more time to harm us, so I keep following the sound.
I’m a doctor. My first instinct is always to preserve life, not end it. My thoughts on guns are jaded after the years of violence I’ve witnessed. Years of stitching up the aftermath of senseless violence have left me with complicated feelings. Still, now might be the time I need one the most.
At the end of the hallway, a streak of red slashes across the pale tile floor. I know that red. It’s fresh enough that the metallic tang already reaches my nose, sharp and coppery. It trails from the direction of the kitchen toward the front door.
When I round the couch, a man is slumped against the front door. He’s half propped against the door like he tried to crawl out before his body gave up.
He must have been lost or disoriented and came into Ettie's apartment by mistake.
His head lolls to one side. One eye is sealed shut by bruised flesh, the other a narrow slit lost in mottled purple. His mouth gapes, split open and crusted with drying blood at the corners.
My medical bag sits on the entry table where I left it earlier. I grab it, drop to my knees beside him, and snap on a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
“Sir, can you hear me?” My voice stays calm, professional, the way it always does in emergencies. “I’m a doctor. I’m going to help you.”
I ease him onto his back, supporting the back of his neck as his head rolls limply. His skin feels clammy and too cool already. I tap his cheek gently.
“Sir. Open your eyes for me.”
No response.
His chest heaves in shallow, irregular jerks beneath the ruined shirt. When he coughs, dark blood bubbles over his lower lip and slides down his chin in a thick trail. The wet, gurgling sound of it makes my jaw clench.
“Can you hear me? Are you able to tell me what happened?”
I work quickly to determine the major points of trauma. The abdominal wound is bleeding the fastest. I rip through his tattered clothing, and he jolts. Burns stripe his abdomen and chest, some blistered, some blackened at the edges. His body looks like someone held a blowtorch on him.
“What the fuck happened to you?” I mutter.
I tear open a sterile dressing and press it against the deepest wound.
“This is going to hurt,” I warn him, applying pressure.
If I can slow the bleeding long enough for paramedics to get here, he might survive transport. With the rate of blood loss, he has little time before he bleeds out.
He screams, and I wince as the animalistic sound rips through the apartment.
Bare feet slap against the floor behind me. Ettie appears at the edge of the living room, walking through shadows in the darkened room.
“Julian.” Her voice is thin and breathless. “What are you doing?”
She stands behind me with a silver gun in one hand and a silk robe knotted loosely around her body. I force my eyes off her heaving chest. Now is not the time even if she’s got a hot-as-fuck set of tits.
“I found him by the door. He must have stumbled in looking for help. Call an ambulance, Ettie. He needs help.”
The man’s gaze lands on Ettie, and panic contorts what is left of his face. He tries to drag himself backward, smearing blood beneath him. The coppery stench thickens in the room.
“Easy,” I say, pressing firmer against the wound. “She won’t hurt you. Breathe through the pain. It’s bad, but help is coming.”
“Fuck you,” he spits.
Blood sprays with the words, warm flecks landing on my gloves and the knee of my sweatpants. He chokes on a wet cough that rattles deep in his chest.
“He’s delirious.” I glance up without stopping the pressure. “Ettie, my cell is on the counter in the kitchen. I’ll need to pack this properly so he can be transferred.”
Blood seeps into the gauze. Even with the added pressure, it’s dark and relentless. It looks like he had a chunk of his stomach sliced out.
The front door clicks with the lock now in place. Ettie stands in front of it, and I glance at her. Is she crying?
“Babydoll, I understand this is frightening, but he still has a chance. The hospital isn’t far.”
My fingers are all but holding him together.
The man goes limp beneath my hands again, his breathing a shallow, gurgling rasp.
“Julian, let me handle this.” Her voice is edged. “This isn’t what you think.”
She hasn’t lowered her gun. Shiny eyes stay fixed on the man as she shifts her weight on bare feet.
“Julian, back up. Please,” she whispers. The plea cuts straight through me, raw and desperate in a way that makes my stomach clench.
“What’s going on?” I demand, still working even as dread coils tighter in my chest. “If I don’t get him to the hospital, he’s going to die right here on your floor.”
“He deserves worse.” Her gun shakes once, then she tightens her grip until her knuckles are bleach white. “Let him die, Julian. Stop trying to save him.”
I stare up at the love of my life. The robe slips open slightly at her collarbone, revealing the smooth curve of skin I know by heart, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Tears cut shiny paths down her cheeks, and her eyes hold a darkness I’ve never seen before.
“Ettie, tell me what is going on.” My hands press harder into the wound. “I cannot stand here and let a man die. You know that.”
The man lurches suddenly. One bloody hand swings toward my face in a weak, desperate arc.
I rise easily, avoiding his sluggish swing, and reach for my medical bag. He’s too far gone to understand what he’s doing. If he keeps thrashing, he’ll finish killing himself before the EMTs arrive.
The gunshot cracks through the apartment. My ears ring instantly.
His head snaps back. A neat, dark hole blooms in his forehead.
“Ettie, what the hell did you just do?”
I rip off my blood-slick gloves and toss them aside as I move toward her.
My hand cups her face, and my thumb brushes the wetness on her cheek.
I have no idea what just happened, but the woman I love is coming apart in front of me.
She needs me to help her fix this. I need to help anchor her and remind her she’s safe.
She shakes her head violently and stumbles backward until her shoulders hit the door with a dull thud.
“You need to leave.”
“No.”
I close the distance between us in two strides. The heat of her body radiates against mine. Her gun lowers an inch, then another, until it hangs beside her trembling thigh. I ease it from her fingers and set it on the entry table with a soft click.
My hand returns to her face immediately, cradling her jaw, willing her to see me through the panic.
“You have to.” Her voice breaks. “He was a bad man, Julian. He did things you don’t understand. He didn’t deserve to live, and you shouldn’t have tried to save him.”
Her eyes flutter shut, and she shakes her head.
“Tell me what he did,” I say. “Why, babydoll?”
With another step, I push my thigh in between her legs.
“Ettie, talk to me.”
She opens her eyes and stares at me for one more shattered second. Her head tilts back, and her look of despair is enough to gut me. Then she grabs my shirt and yanks my mouth down to hers.
“No,” she says on a breath. “I don’t want to talk.” Then she kisses me again, harder this time.
My fingers tangle in her hair, and I pull her close. Maybe I’m trying to rid her of whatever demons made her pull the trigger.
Legs wrap around my waist, and my hands go under each of her thighs, pulling her higher.
I press her back to the wall, my breath tearing out of me when her hand shoves beneath the waistband of my sweats. She pulls out my cock and drags my sweatpants down just enough for her to take what she needs.
“This is my favorite way to fuck you, Ettie. Is this what my babydoll needs?”
I push inside her without giving her time to answer, and her wet heat closes around me so tightly my vision blurs.
She’s still crying, and I’m faintly aware I’m fucking my girl in front of a dead man. A man she killed. I should stop and get her to talk to me. But she needs this more right now. She clings tighter with every thrust, like she is trying to climb inside of me.
“Julian, you shouldn’t have tried to save him,” she whispers against my mouth.
“I’m a doctor. I will always try to save people.”
With a deeper thrust, I pin her in place with my hip. My palm slams against the wall beside her head.
“And I want to destroy them all,” she says, barely loud enough to hear.
“Babydoll, what are you talking about?”
“You need to go.” Her voice splinters. “This was a mistake. Us…”
Even though she told me to go, she’s sucking me in with her cunt. Her skin is cold now beneath my lips as I kiss along her collarbone, searching for the place that always makes her melt against me.
“Nothing between us could ever be a mistake. You’re in my soul, Ettie.
” I drag my mouth over her jaw, trying to reach the woman disappearing in front of me.
“I’ll fix this. He broke in. You thought he was a threat.
Self-defense. I’ll make the call and handle the cleanup.
No one has to know what really happened here. ”
Her body tightens around me, that perfect, greedy pulsing that always undoes me. God, those storm-gray eyes are shattering. She shakes her head against the wall, silver hair sticking to her wet cheeks.
"No, Julian." Her voice cracks. "You can't fix this. You can't fix me."
I thrust deeper, harder, trying to drown out her words. And to remind her she’s mine.
Her nails dig into my shoulders, urging me to keep going. The heat of her, the way she clenches every time I bottom out, takes my breath.
But she's pushing my chest now, weak at first, then stronger the second time.
"Stop."
The word is small, broken.
"Please stop."
I go still instantly.
I’m buried to the hilt with my forehead pressed to hers. Our breaths mingle, ragged and hot. I can feel her heart hammering against my ribs.
"Ettie—"
"Get out."
She presses against me again. This time, her legs unwrap from my waist.
I slide out of her with a wet sound that feels obscene in the sudden silence.
She slides down the wall until her bare feet touch the floor, robe hanging open, thighs glistening with us.
I reach for her again, but she snatches the gun from the entry table before I can touch her. The barrel shines even in the dark as she raises it, pointing it dead center at my chest.
"Ettie, baby—"
"Don't." Her voice is steel now. Her lower lip trembles, but her hand remains steady. "Don't call me that. Don't come closer."
The dead man is cooling on the floor between us, blood pooling toward the rug.
"You don't understand what you've seen tonight," she says quietly. "What I am. What I've been doing."
"Then tell me." I take a step anyway, because I can't not. "Whatever it is, we'll—put the gun down, Ettie."
"No." Her voice isn’t trembling anymore. "You need to leave. Right now. Walk out that door and forget this address. Forget me."
"I'm not—"
"You are." She cocks the hammer. The sound is deafening in the blood-scented silence, and my heart seizes. "Because if you don't, I'll put you down right next to him. I swear to God, Julian, I'll do it."
I believe her. Not that she would really kill me. But she’s killed us. The life I wanted with her is bleeding out on the floor right alongside the dead man. It’s over and she's already mourning me.
My hands rise slowly, palms open in surrender. I pull up my sweats, the fabric catching on my cock, and slide my feet into the shoes I kicked off beside the front door earlier.
She bites her lower lip when I look up at her once more and grab my bag.
Her wrist flicks. She motions me toward the door with the sharp, impatient movement of the gun.
I back away. Every step feels like tearing something vital out of my chest. The door handle is cool under my fingers.
“This isn't how we end,” I tell her quietly.
“It has to be." She blinks too fast. “Go.”
I open the door and step into the hallway. She doesn't lower the gun. The deadbolt locks behind the closed door. It takes everything inside me to walk away.